


Private Universe

by sunsolace



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-01 07:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16761085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsolace/pseuds/sunsolace
Summary: It's hard to look to the living when the dead are still unsettled. After finding Sanctuary, Preston has to bury his fallen squad mates.





	Private Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Crowded House song of the same name.

Ghosts rustle in the ruins of Sanctuary Hills. Even if someone cleared away the skeletons in the neighbourhood, Skyler can still hear bones rattling underfoot. The invading woods shiver and beckon, phantasmal movement in her peripheral, as they smother the decrepit houses. Their revenge is slow, unhurried. In two hundred and ten years, shrubs now sway on the footpath while vines climb through the windows of her neighbours’ houses.

The green—or green-brown—incursion has taken root between cracks in the pavement, worrying at concrete until it’s broken into grey islands sailing a sea of grass. Backyards ripple, lawn now knee-high fields. In Mr Baker’s house, a tree has taken root in the living room, growing slanted towards the light streaming from the front window.

In every rustle, Skyler hears her old world. She quickens her pace. Dogmeat lopes beside her, unruffled.

Preston is still sitting on the stone wall that marks the entrance to Sanctuary Hills. A reflection of the statue guarding the other side of the bridge. The quiet neighbourhood, now quieter than Skyler has ever heard it, sags on either side of the road. Overhead, the sky is so very blue.

It still feels like a dream.

It has to be a dream if Skyler can walk calmly down the dilapidated street to reach a man in a duster with a DIY laser rifle resting across his lap. Or musket, whatever they want to call it. A gun is a gun, and she’s never much understood the fascination with them.

That will have to change soon, she suspects.

Preston glances her way. “Something you needed?”

He sounds tired. Granted, he’s sounded tired for the past four days, ever since the battle fever faded on the walk from Concord to Sanctuary. But this—this is something deeper.

“Just wanted to check in.”

Skyler isn’t sure what to make of this ragtag group of survivors, least of all their leader. If they hadn’t been held up in Concord, or she’d stumbled out of Vault 111 later, she might have emerged to strangers roosting in her home.

“All’s quiet,” Preston says, scanning the horizon. “That’s how I like it.”

“You and me both.” Skyler holds out a water bottle, and he takes it with murmured thanks. “You mind if I join you?”

He gestures to the weathered stone beside him, and she sits. Fiddles with her glasses. Dogmeat plops at their feet, tongue lolling. It’s quiet, and she doesn’t know how to break it. She can’t hear Rosa working on her car or Mr Jahani running laps or someone yelling at Luis.

_A month ago, there were twenty of us. Yesterday there were eight. Now, we’re five._

Ghosts everywhere. Skyler sees fifteen of them lingering in Preston’s liquid black gaze.

At least she knows how it feels to carry ghosts on her back.

“We haven’t, ah, had much time to talk.”

Not her smoothest opening, but when Preston glances her way, he’s more curious than dismissive. “Mama Murphy was right that this place is a haven, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. There’s a lot of work to be done if we want Sanctuary to be home.”

Skyler has to admit she’s impressed by his resolve, even now. “I’m not convinced you sleep.”

He chuckles once, little more than a huff of breath and the corners of his mouth twitching. “I’m not convinced, either.”

Skyler looks down, scuffing a piece of gravel under her shoe. No going barefoot through the neighbourhood anymore. “I’m sorry about the people you lost.”

In her peripheral, Preston goes still. Then he bows his head. “Me too. I keep going over it in my mind, looking for ways I could’ve saved them.”

“That’s how you drive yourself mad. Trust me.” If she wishes she’d been the one to carry Shaun into Vault 111, Preston doesn’t need to know that. “Five people are alive because of you.”

Preston frowns as he does the maths. “Five?”

“You kept my dumb ass alive in Concord.”

“Hey, you were the distraction we needed, when we needed it.”

The wording seems quite deliberate.

Skyler chuckles despite herself, then feels guilty. Her husband is dead in the ground, and she’s laughing?

Preston is equally solemn beside her; any remaining humour leaches out of the air. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Whatever you need.”

He looks her over—and pauses. “Aren’t you armed?”

She blinks. “No.”

“It’s never safe out here. You need a weapon at all times.”

“I—” _hate guns? Am afraid of shooting someone accidentally?_

Preston shoves his musket into her hands and stands up. “Guard the settlement. I have something I need to do.”

Skyler bites back a squawk of surprise. Her hands curl around the musket, just enough to keep it from falling off her lap.

Preston marches across the bridge and down the road. Skyler watches him until he disappears from view, his duster blending into the faded autumn hues.

Well then.

Pulse jumping in her ears, Skyler surveys the land around her, but no monsters pop up in the fifteen seconds since Preston left. Dogmeat, however, has vanished sometime during their conversation. She scans their surrounds but can’t see him.

Skyler adjusts the musket in her lap, holding it the way Dominic taught her to a lifetime ago. She keeps her finger well away from the trigger.

The musket is little more than wood and wires strapped together with duct tape. It feels remarkably sturdy, even the non-duct-taped bits. Skyler admits the ingenuity of the musket appeals to her.

A branch snaps and she glances up.

A thrill runs through her as she realises she’s alone. The bend of the trees takes on a sinister lilt as they loom on all sides, perpetual motion in her peripheral that makes her twitch this way and that. The river is running low, its murky stained water gurgling over the rocks. Every noise sounds like an intruder creeping towards the neighbourhood.

Her heart thunders in her chest.

Over the last week, she’d heard fragments of the story that chased Preston’s group all the way from Quincy to Concord. Names for monsters she can’t even picture.

Not yet, at least.

She imagines them now, large and twisted and skeletal, stalking her from afar. Their white eyes fixed on her as their tumour-ridden hides move with silent, fetid breaths. Or maybe they’re small and burrowing, about to burst from the earth to clamp onto her heels and drag her under.

The Quincy survivors depend on her, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing or where Preston’s gone or when he’ll be back. If he’ll be back.

The ghosts in his eyes haunt her.

Her every nerve remains taut until mid-afternoon when a silhouette crests the opposite riverbank. Skyler’s grip tightens on the musket, puts it halfway to her shoulder before the figure resolves into a militia hat and duster. She adjusts her glasses.

Preston. But something about his silhouette looks off.

Skyler rises to her feet, making her way with care across the rotten boards in the bridge. Halfway across, she realises why his figure looks too bulky. He’s dragging a tarp along the ground behind him.

“You’re back!” This close she can see the sweat running down his face and the grim blankness of his eyes. His lower face is concealed by his scarf.

Behind him, the thing on the tarp is shrouded, but the odd lumps in its suspiciously large shape seems—

Oh.

“I couldn’t leave Dwayne there,” Preston says roughly. “I wanted to get Betsy and Kaleb, too, but their bodies were gone.”

He pauses only long enough to reclaim his laser musket and drink some water, then he marches up to the tree line to grab fallen branches and drag them to the road.

“Don’t just stand there. Guard my back or help me build a pyre.”

Skyler jumps and scurries over to help. In minutes, her arms and even her face are scratched from dragging what branches she can from the sickly golden woods. As it turns out, one needs a considerable amount of wood to make a decent funeral pyre. By the time Preston decides they have enough to arrange around Dwayne’s body, Skyler’s shoulders ache and her chest heaves.

Preston manoeuvres the stiff body onto the pyre. The shroud briefly slips in a waft of rotting meat. Skyler’s gut lurches, and not just at the smell. It’s the same man who fell by the door to the museum, whose laser musket she now owns with Preston’s blessing.

They head into Sanctuary proper to tell the others, then the whole group shuffles back to the pyre in one sombre line. Even Dogmeat is subdued, keeping pace with Preston. Sturges finds petrol in Rosa’s garage to douse the pyre.

As afternoon light burns gold on the Red Rocket’s sweeping roof, Preston steps forward. “Dwayne was our best tracker. Half the reason any of us were able to make it out of Quincy undetected, let alone make it across the Commonwealth. I’ve known— knew him since I joined Colonel Hollis’ unit. I’m sorry, and I’ll miss you.”

Mama Murphy sighs where she stands beside Jun, her gnarled hand clamped around his arm. “You did your family proud, kid, don’t worry about that. They’ll be happy to see you. When I join ya, I’ll finish the deathclaw story.”

Jun goes next. “Dwayne… he knew there was a time for quiet and a time for distractions. I’ll remember your jokes. Save them for someone who needs to hear them.”

Sturges says, “Dwayne was a fixer, and from one fixer to another, the world’s a sorrier place without ya. Thank you for everything.”

Marcy scowls at the pyre. “You came when Quincy called. That’s more than most can say. And… you pulled Jun out of the crossfire at Postal Square.”

Skyler remains silent.

With no more words to be had, Preston lights the fire. It licks at the kindling before probing the edge of the tarp. In minutes it burns with a fierce orange heat to rival the sun at her back. Greasy dark smoke belches into the air, stinking of cooking meat.

Skyler tries not to gag but her eyes sting and breaking through her mouth coats the back of her throat with smoke. She looks about, anywhere but at the black skeletal remains in the fire, and notices a spot of black in a nearby tree. A crow.

 _One for sorrow,_ she thinks.

Dogmeat paces a short distance away, ears flicking, uncomfortable with the choking stench of the fire. Sturges is the first to leave, but he returns an hour later with two metal plaques scrawled with names. One for the lost Quincy settlers, the other for Colonel Hollis’ unit, Holly’s Boys. He and Preston solemnly affix them to either side of the statue.

When the fire has burned down, the Quincy survivors take their leave one by one. Mama Murphy needs to sit down, so Marcy leads her back to Sanctuary. Dogmeat peels away to accompany them. Sturges drifts away next with a final nod to the fallen. Jun lingers the longest, his shoulders slumped under his ratty white tee. Even he too leaves, haltingly, before whatever tether that holds him snaps, and he wanders up the road with his head bowed.

“You don’t have to stay,” Preston says. “I’ll watch the fire.”

Only the most persistent orange tongues still lick at the blackened remains of the body. Once it’s extinguished and cooled, the remains will need to be taken care of.

Skyler hesitates, then figures he wants some private time to say goodbye.

Preston remains by the memorial as the afternoon shifts from gold to grey to blue, lingering in the shadow of the statue. Skyler knows this because she keeps prowling up to the bridge to check on him, but chickens out of going to talk to him.

It soon becomes clear, however, that he intends to stand vigil all night.

Skyler finds a blanket and an old thermos in her ruined kitchen, grabs a portion of Marcy’s stew, then wanders down the street. Trees jeer at her with their whispering voices, rustling behind and _inside_ darkened living rooms. A mockery of the evening conversations that should be going on in the houses.

Preston sits on a log near the statue with a dark bottle in his hands. Skyler slows down, struck again by the urge to leave him alone to his mourning. But she’s seen enough already to know he won’t take care of himself otherwise.

His eyes flash in her direction as a hand strays for his musket.

“It’s just me!”

He relaxes. “Sorry. Can’t be too careful.”

Skyler skirts around the tiny campfire to sit beside him on the log. “Here. I’ll swap you.” Before he has a chance to protest, she claims the Gwinnett Stout and shoves the thermos in his hands.

Preston cautiously lifts the thermos to his nose. When he realises it’s soup, he says, “Thanks.”

Skyler, meanwhile, investigates the alcohol. Dominic hadn’t liked her drinking, even if he’d often gone bar hopping with his squad mates. Except Dominic and his squad mates and all those bars are gone.

She takes a drink and splutters.

Outside the bounds of the neighbourhood, it’s easier to pretend in the dark that everything is normal. That the trees are near-bare because it’s late autumn.

Skyler and Preston could be the only two people left in the world.

She takes another eye-searing swig.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Tired.” He doesn’t elaborate, just leans his elbows on his knees.

“Yeah. I get that.” She does. Fatigue weighs down her bones, turning her eyes to lead balls in her skull. A part of her wants to crawl back into her cryo pod and sleep for another two hundred years in the hopes she wakes to a better future.

Shaun is the only thing stopping her from doing just that.

“If you need to talk,” Skyler begins, “I’m here.”

“Kind of you to offer, but you don’t have to do that.”

“Least I can do, mate.”

Preston eyes her sidelong, perhaps curious at her accent. Then his gaze slides to the ground. “It still doesn’t feel real. Every day, I’m expecting to wake up to Robin and Garfield arguing over breakfast. Dwayne would be returning from a scouting expedition. Colonel Hollis would be talking on his radio or poring over his logbook, working out where we’d go next. Now they’re…” He bows his head.

“You don’t think they’d be proud of you?”

“For failing them all?” Preston’s voice is bitter.

“For surviving, and keeping the other survivors alive as well. As long as you’re alive, the Minutemen aren’t lost.”

“I wasn’t there for my squad mates when they needed me most and I— we— we failed. Quincy called for help, and the Minutemen _failed_.”

The furious grief makes her heart twist.

“The part that makes me angriest is that the other Minutemen turned their backs on us. Colonel Hollis is— was…” he sniffles and clears his throat. “Was well-respected. And the others just ignored him.”

Skyler asks, “Where do you think they are now?”

“I don’t know, but they’ve lost the right to call themselves Minutemen. If they’re still active, they’re just their own private armies. If we’d had even just one other company there, maybe we could’ve…” His exhale is rough. “I just wish there was something I could’ve done.”

“You did everything you could have and more.”

“Thanks, but I don’t know if I believe that. One of my closest friends, Jessa—she was a courier before signing on. Fast, light, perfect fit for the Minutemen. We made it out of Quincy with the other survivors. Kept each other on our feet. Then we went to Lexington.” He shakes his head with a terrible smile. “Worst call we could’ve made. Place was swarming with ferals. I got swiped defending our rear and she raced in to hold them off. As Dwayne dragged me away, she— she was overwhelmed. It should’ve been me. She deserved better than that. If I’d died instead of Jessa, or Colonel Hollis, things would be better.”

A chill runs through Skyler. “More likely I’d be sitting here next to Jessa or Hollis listening to them say the exact same thing. Or maybe they never made it here, or this far. Then I’d be a smear on the concrete in Concord. Or worse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Neither do you.”

Preston grimaces and says nothing.

Resting a hand on his forearm, she ventures, “Put it this way: the Gunners wanted all of you dead. As long as you’re alive, you’re defying them.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. When you lose hope, there’s always spite.”

Preston traces the rim of the thermos. “I’m not sure that’d make me the kind of person I want to be.”

“I don’t know. In a world like this, being aggressively nice seems like a good way to spite everything.”

He glances at her sidelong. “Is that what keeps you going? After what you’ve lost…”

Skyler doesn’t know how to tell him she’s skipped spite and gone straight to despair. “Ask me again in six months.”

If she’s still alive in six months.

A chill runs through her. She doesn’t want to die, but she’s not a survivor the way Preston is—although the darkness in his eyes makes her shiver again.

“I will see you tomorrow, won’t I?”

“Huh?”

“Promise me I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When Preston hesitates, her heart stops dead in her chest. But then he nods once. “I promise.”

They sit together until the horizon lightens to grey. Sunrise can’t chase the ghosts away, but maybe they aren’t so loud with someone else there.


End file.
